Part of Series
On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia met in the Battle of Hampton Roads―the first time ironclad vessels would engage each other in combat. For four hours the two ships pummeled one another as thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers and civilians watched from the shorelines. Although the battle ended in a draw, this engagement would change the nature of naval warfare by informing both vessel design and battle tactics. The “wooden walls” of navies around the world suddenly appeared far more vulnerable, and many political and military leaders initiated or accelerated their own ironclad-building programs. Americans did not initially have much faith in the Monitor. Few believed that this strange little vessel could hold her own against the formidable Confederate ironclad Virginia, which had been built on the bones of the scuttled USS Merrimack in Portsmouth, Virginia. The Virginia, seemingly relentless and unstoppable, had ravaged the U.S. Navy in Hampton Roads on March 8, just before the Monitor arrived. Yet the following day, the “cheesebox on a raft” proved her Union mettle, becoming a national hero in her own right. For the remainder of the Civil War the Union Navy used dozens of monitor-style vessels on inland waters as well as at sea. But there would always be only one first Monitor, and she became affectionately known to many throughout the nation as “Our Little Monitor.” Her loss off Cape Hatteras on December 31, 1862, was mourned as keenly in the press as the loss of 16 of her men that night. Using the latest archaeological finds from the USS Monitor Center in Newport News, Virginia, as well as untapped archival material, Anna Gibson Holloway and Jonathan W. White bring “Our Little Monitor” to life once more in this beautifully illustrated volume. In addition to telling her story from conception in 1861 to sinking in 1862, as well as her recent recovery and ongoing restoration, they explain how fighting in this new “machine” changed the experience of her crew and reveal how the Monitor became “the pet of the people”―a vessel celebrated in prints, tokens, and household bric-a-brac; a marketing tool; and a prominent feature in parades, Sanitary Fairs, and politics.
Authors
Anna Gibson Holloway is the former curator of the award-winning USS Monitor Center at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, VA, where she was also Vice President of Collections and Programs. In her long career as a public historian, she has been a pirate, a square-rig sailor, a hurdy-gurdy player, a puppeteer, an understudy fire-eater, college professor, and also served as the maritime historian for the National Park Service in Washington, DC. She holds a PhD and MA in history from the College of William & Mary, and undergraduate degrees from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her current research focuses on the Battle of Hampton Roads in popular culture, the Oyster Wars of the lower Chesapeake Bay, and the marine salvage firm of B & J Baker & Co. of Norfolk, VA. And yes, those do all go together. Sort of. She is currently the Supervisory Historian for the History and Heritage Program at the Maritime Administration (MARAD). There she is responsible for MARAD’s heritage asset collection, its historic vessel database, and for researching and writing the history of the US Merchant Marine. She was previously the team lead of Fleet History within the Histories Branch of the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) in Washington, D.C. where she was responsible for the team of professional historians who produce the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (DANFS) as well as other short- and long-form publications and projects dealing with sailor stories, fleet history, and fleet support.
